Shadow Friendly
by Lassiter
Summary: [Pyro fic.] The end of the world and the places where we grow strong. Post X2. Post everything.


DISCLAIMER: I do not own these characters or places. I'm not making profit from them either. So, uh.. don't sue?  
NOTES: Written for multifandom1000's (LJ community) disaster challenge.

***

**Shadow Friendly**

It was a long walk to the mansion. John would have driven if he could. If there was still a functioning vehicle in the area and gasoline still existed. If the roads hadn't been blasted/washed away/melted/blocked, if someone had invented a time machine to go back to the night of the beginning of the end. In an alternate universe, John would be coasting down the highway with the windows down and a criminally catchy song on the stereo.  
  
The walk didn't take as long as he thought it would. He didn't feel as tired as he thought he would either, but after half a lifetime of what he had been through, an uneventful walk, even over such distances, was a vacation.  
  
_Half a lifetime. Christ, I'm old._  
  
John could already see the edges of the mansion in the distance.  
  
++  
  
The sign said: _Xavier's Sch l for Gif _.  
  
John traced where the letters had worn away and grimaced at the grime that came off on his fingers. Wiping them on his jacket, John squeezed through the broken gate, looked upon his past, and found himself unprepared for the feelings forgotten memories inspire.  
  
The mansion, now ivy-swathed and crumbling, was both familiar and strange, stirring thoughts that scratched at emotional scar tissue. (First kiss, Jubilee, fifteen years old, behind the storage sheds. Contraband alcohol, Bobby and Piotr, on the roof, after final exams. All-night conversation, Rogue, kitchen, a bag of Tostitos and some spicy salsa… Stop. _Stop_, that's enough.)  
  
Stop.  
  
"Self-control is imperative," Magneto had said, and John had learned.  
  
++  
  
In some places in the garden, the grass had grown as high as his knees. In other places, the ground was bare. Still in others there were craters and deep gouges in the ground. He knew the stories behind such violent markings, but now was not the time to remember them.  
  
The mansion was worse from the inside.  
  
John wrinkled his nose at the smell of urine and stubborn decay. Leaks made puddles and puddles made mud. The knocked-down walls make it hard to get around. Up the stairs he went: creak after creak like the sound old and brittle bones. John expected the steps to give way anytime now, expected to fall at any minute.  
  
He reached the second floor without incident.  
  
_Keep walking._  
  
John tried not to think of a tomb. If this were a tomb, there would at least be bodies.  
  
John passed a mirror as he turned off the main corridor. In the cracked glass, he spied dark circles, gray hairs, and lines he never saw before, and he walked a little faster.  
  
++  
  
The door fell over when he touched the knob. Dust flew everywhere.  
  
He waved his arms, he coughed, he stepped through, and, when the air cleared, he was standing in his old room.  
  
_Whatever it is you walked five hundred miles to find_, said his mind, _you better figure out what it is now_.  
  
++  
  
_Alkali Lake is only miles behind them, but how easy it is for distance to translate itself into entire lifetimes. John doesn't want to think about it. The high that had come from choosing his own direction is starting to fade, and he doesn't want to hasten the process.  
  
A fireball swells and shrinks randomly in his hand. John thinks there must be some kind of common policy that prohibits such displays in the aircraft, but neither Magneto nor Mystique seem to care. It's also revenge, in a small, seven-year-old kind of way. _'John, no fire indoors.' 'John, stop playing with your lighter.' Well, folks, get a load of this. Hah._  
  
"You'll miss it, you know," says Magneto.  
  
The 'it' could be a hundred things, but John knew exactly what the old man was talking about.  
  
"Yeah. Sure." John doesn't take his eyes off the flame. Doesn't want to look at Magneto. "I'll probably run crying back to them within a week, right?" he mumbles. Callousness, which came so naturally to him before this minute, feels strange and clunky on his tongue.  
  
"You found your feet at that school," says Magneto. "We always go back to the first place where we feel safe. Try as we might, as hard as we want to, we never quite shake the place where we first come into our own."  
  
"I was alright before Xavier found me," John replies petulantly.  
  
Magneto raises an eyebrow. "Yes. But there is a difference between surviving and living, Pyro. You became strong at Xavier, and you will never completely rise above that. Something deep inside, whether you like it or not, will still call the place home."  
  
"Whatever."  
  
The fire in John's hand swells, swirls like a hurricane, and he catches it between two hands. As the distance between his hands closes, the fire shrinks. His palms meet. When they separate, the fire is gone, and they let a minute of silence roll by.  
  
"You suck at pep talks," John finally says.  
  
"You suck," said Magneto, mocking the colloquialism, "at accepting the truth."_  
  
++  
  
John tried sitting on the bed but it collapsed upon detecting the extra weight. This left him reluctant to move at all, standing in the middle of the room and wondering if the floor would give out if he shuffled one step to the right.  
  
"I can't be the only one left," he said aloud, because the silence began freak him out.  
  
Maybe he could look for them, for survivors. It wasn't like he had anything else to do. There were definitely some out there. There _had_ to be. Then it could be like the Neolithic Age all over again. Or Genesis. There would be new Adams and new Eves, but this time they would have thousands of years of experience to draw on and learn from. This time they wouldn't take the apple from the snake. It would be a completely different beginning.  
  
Beginnings appealed to John these days.  
  
Outside, the sky was streaked red and black: pollution and pathetic fallacy. The light that fell through the window was a sickly orange color, painting the room a shadow friendly, end-of-the-world shade. The entire scene reminded John of some kind of satirical poster: _It's the end of the world. Where will you be?_  
  
John sat on the floor, felt his heartbeat catch when the floorboards squeak, and exhaled noiselessly when the floor remains intact.  
  
_Whatever it is you walked five hundred miles to find…  
  
Where will you be?_  
  
John didn't know, but he was willing to sit here and wait until he found out.  



End file.
